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NUUO Inc. (Taiwan Headquarters)
B1, No.207-1, Sec. 3, Beixin Rd., Xindian Dist., New Taipei City
231, Taiwan
Tel : +886-2-7739-2260 Fax : +886-2-7703-3377
NUUO US Inc.
690 N. Berry Street, Suite B, Brea, California 92821, USA
Toll Free: +1-877-241-7035 Fax: +1-714-990-1689
NUUO South Africa Office
Fancourt Office Park, Building 7, 1st Floor Right., Cnr
Felstead & Northumberland, Northriding, South Africa
Tel: +27-11-704-6845
NUUO Crystal VM Performance Report
Abstract:

This report is intended to provide readers a reference design as well as the resulting performance of
NUUO Crystal VM. This SKU, consisting of HP DL380p server and EMC VNX 5300 FC-SAN storage,
has 8 virtual machines (VM), running at 64 channels for continuous recording mode, 128 channels
liveviewing, and 16 channels playback per VM. Our performance test indicates the following performance
for 3 days of test span.
Recording throughput at 2Gbps (250Mbps/VM/volume group) for continuous video inputs,
Liveview performance at minimal 27fps per channel

Introduction:
NUUO Crystal VM is one of the best VMS solutions, ready to be deployed on the virtualization
environment. This solution is certified by VMware ready program and also inherits the concept ofOne VM,
one App, recommended by VMware to mitigate the potential risks of VM crashes. The synergy between
NUUOs expertise in video management and VMwares bare-metal management capability can truly provide
ano-single-point of failurereliability.
Since virtualization is a relatively new concept to the security world, NUUO initiates a SKU design to
assist security users better designing their projects. This performance test is aimed to provide solutions of
recording of 512 channels, liveview channels of 1,024 channels, and playback channels of 128 channels. The
detail system architecture as well as the hardware and software are listed in the following chapter for
readers reference.
A performance testing kit (PTK) is prepared upon readers request. This kit is for two purposes:
Validate a new SKU performance
Validate equipment from different server, switch, or storage manufacturers.

Test Equipment and Software:
This test is conducted with the equipment and software listed below.

Item Manufacturer/ Model Relevant specifications
Server HP/ DL380p CPU Intel Xeon E5-2695v2 x 2
128GB RAM
Switch Cisco/ Catalyst 2950 2 x 10Gbps port
24 x 1Gbps port
FC-Switch HP StorageWorks 8/8 FC-SAN 8Gbps
Storage EMC VNX 5300 Dual Controller
Fiber SAN Storage
Table 1: Performance Test Equipment List

Item Manufacturer/ SW name/ OS Version Info
Recording Server NUUO Inc./ NUUO Crystal VM/ Linux V2.1
Hypervisor VMware Inc./ vSphere/ Linux V5.5
Liveview Client NUUO Inc./ NuClient/ Windows V2.1
Playback Client NUUO Inc./ Virtual Client/ Linux V1.0
Virtual Camera NUUO Inc./ Virtual CAM/ Linux V1.1
Table 2: Performance Test Software List
www.nuuo.com
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NUUO Inc. (Taiwan Headquarters)
B1, No.207-1, Sec. 3, Beixin Rd., Xindian Dist., New Taipei City
231, Taiwan
Tel : +886-2-7739-2260 Fax : +886-2-7703-3377
NUUO US Inc.
690 N. Berry Street, Suite B, Brea, California 92821, USA
Toll Free: +1-877-241-7035 Fax: +1-714-990-1689
NUUO South Africa Office
Fancourt Office Park, Building 7, 1st Floor Right., Cnr
Felstead & Northumberland, Northriding, South Africa
Tel: +27-11-704-6845

Figure 1: System Architecture Diagram
Procedure:
The entire setup can be divided into 5 stages. A step-by-step instruction for each stage is provided to assist
readers setting.
1. Prepare Video Source:
Due to the great amount of video is required, this test is conducted using NUUOs proprietary fake
video source, which is simulated as a H.264 IP camera. Each video is sourced from a pre-recorded file
whose bit-rate and resolution is set to be full-HD with a constant bit rate at 4Mbps. During the test, each
video source is connected mostly twice to ensure constant throughput.

2. Setup Virtual Machines:
Eight VMs are setup for the experiment. Each VM is planned for 64 channels continuous recording at
250Mbps, 128 channels liveview, and 16 channels playback. The deployment is rather easy but using
deploy OVF imagein vSphere client. Table 3 is the recommended resources for each VM. Please
refer toNUUO Crystal VM V2.1 Installation Guidefor a complete introduction.
Resource Name Suggested Resource
CPU 2 cores (4,500MHz)
RAM 4GB
Table 3: NUUO Crystal VM Resource Configuration

3. Configure Storage:
FC-SAN storage is highly recommended for 8 VMs scenario due to high bandwidth (2Gb/s
downstream in total). In this report, EMC VNX 5300 and its fiber channel link are selected.
One LUN(Logical Unit Number) is created for each VM. Each LUN consists of 3 HDDs and is
configured as RAID 5(redundant array of independent disks) for data redundancy. Using 3 HDDs as
RAID 5 creates a worst-case scenario since its disk performance maybe worse than a single HDD due to
www.nuuo.com
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NUUO Inc. (Taiwan Headquarters)
B1, No.207-1, Sec. 3, Beixin Rd., Xindian Dist., New Taipei City
231, Taiwan
Tel : +886-2-7739-2260 Fax : +886-2-7703-3377
NUUO US Inc.
690 N. Berry Street, Suite B, Brea, California 92821, USA
Toll Free: +1-877-241-7035 Fax: +1-714-990-1689
NUUO South Africa Office
Fancourt Office Park, Building 7, 1st Floor Right., Cnr
Felstead & Northumberland, Northriding, South Africa
Tel: +27-11-704-6845
the write penalty
1
. The tested HDD is 1TB ES series from Seagate. Each LUN can accommodate 0.75
days data under the current throughput.
Once LUN is created, an additional disk is required to be added into VM. RDM (raw device mapping)
disk is preferred over VMDK (virtual machine disk). The details can be checked inNUUO Crystal
VM V2.1 Installation Guide.

4. Setup Network:
Each VM provides two network interfaces. One is recommended for Client viewing and
configuration; while the other one is for retrieving video streams from IP cameras. Each interface is
supposed to connect to one virtual switch, supported by a physical network card. Note that the IP address
of the VM may be different from the IP address of the physical network card.
Once VM is configured successfully, clickPower onbutton in vSphere Web Client to execute the
VM. Please open the console in vSphere Web Client to check the true ip address of the VM.

5. Configure NUUO Crystal Application:
Install NuClient.exe from NUUO Website. UseNUUO Crystal Installation Wizardto search for
servers ip address. Note that the client and the configuration network interface of each VM shall be in
the same local area network (LAN).
Pick one of the VMs as the combination of management server and recording server and the rest ones
as the recording servers as shown in figure 2.

Figure 2: NUUO Crystal configurations in this test

After finishing the wizard, please start NuClient and connect to the management server. Go to the
Configtab to add volume into volume group as well as cameras into each of the recording servers.
Keep in mind that each video source shall not be added more than twice in order to have a constant
throughput.

6. Setup NuClient and Virtual Client:
OpenLiveviewtab in NuClient. Select a layout with more than 8x8 grids. Drag one of recording
servers into the layout and the Client will automatically populate all the video sources to grid. In order to
test for 128 channels per VM, two NuClients are required. Note that our test is to test the streaming
capability of the recording server; therefore, no video decoding is necessary for NuClient.
Virtual client is linux-based and requires logging in as an administrator to execute. The details please
refer to the user manual of the virtual client.

1
http://theithollow.com/2012/03/understanding-raid-penalty/
www.nuuo.com
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NUUO Inc. (Taiwan Headquarters)
B1, No.207-1, Sec. 3, Beixin Rd., Xindian Dist., New Taipei City
231, Taiwan
Tel : +886-2-7739-2260 Fax : +886-2-7703-3377
NUUO US Inc.
690 N. Berry Street, Suite B, Brea, California 92821, USA
Toll Free: +1-877-241-7035 Fax: +1-714-990-1689
NUUO South Africa Office
Fancourt Office Park, Building 7, 1st Floor Right., Cnr
Felstead & Northumberland, Northriding, South Africa
Tel: +27-11-704-6845

After setup, the test, including recording, liveview, and playback, ran for 3 days to ensure the disk space
is fully recycled for at least 3 times. Normally, disk recycling would result in inconsistent performance.
However, with NUUOs patented file-ring technology, a constant throughput at 250Mbps per volume is
guaranteed.

Report:
1. Recording Performance:
8 LUNS are used to store video data from 8 VMs. The system is running for 3 days and a recording
throughput is recorded every 5 seconds. Since disk I/O has its own buffering mechanism, one minute
window is used for running averaging the data.
Figure 3 uses quartiles for showing the consistency of the data.
Central box shows the 3
rd
quartile, median, and the 1
st
quartile,
Top whisker is the difference between maximum and 3
rd
quartile,
Bottom whisker is the difference between minimal and 1
st
quartile.
The result shows very consistent recording throughput over 3 days span. The minimal recording
throughput is around 254MBps, around 1.6% of the median value among a 3 days span.

Figure 3: Recording Throughput for individual LUNs

2. Liveview Performance:
For each VM, 128 out streams are requested. Every minute, the average frame rate per channel is
recorded. There are more than 5.5 million data points per LUN over 3 days of measurement. Figure 4
uses quartiles to demonstrate the consistency of the data. Our record shows each VM is capable of
supporting more than 27 frames per second which is 90% of the source frame rate. The median (50%
chance) of the frame rate is above 30.
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www.nuuo.com
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NUUO Inc. (Taiwan Headquarters)
B1, No.207-1, Sec. 3, Beixin Rd., Xindian Dist., New Taipei City
231, Taiwan
Tel : +886-2-7739-2260 Fax : +886-2-7703-3377
NUUO US Inc.
690 N. Berry Street, Suite B, Brea, California 92821, USA
Toll Free: +1-877-241-7035 Fax: +1-714-990-1689
NUUO South Africa Office
Fancourt Office Park, Building 7, 1st Floor Right., Cnr
Felstead & Northumberland, Northriding, South Africa
Tel: +27-11-704-6845

Figure 4: Liveview performance for individual LUNs (Diamond: Average frame-rate)

Summary:
This report shows the combination between our reference design, consisting of HP DL380p and EMC VNX
5300, and NUUO Crystal VM can work seamlessly. Recording, liveview, and playback all demonstrates
consistent performance within 3 days of testing period.
Our consistency is established upon:
Total recording throughput for a 5 minutes running average window is above 95% of expected
throughput.
Liveviewing frame rate is above 90% of the frame rate of the video source.

Since there are too many combinations between external storages and host servers, a test tool is prepared for
readers who are interested in validating their own designs. Please contact sales@nuuo.com for such a
request.
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